Environment

"The work sheds new light on the sort of conditions in which brown dwarfs form," says Watson.

"If the gas pressure in these environments is high enough, it could impact on the type of objects developing there."

"It also pushes down the lower limit for brown dwarf star mass, previously thought to be at least 13 times Jupiter's mass. That figure was set because deuterium burning, which powers brown dwarfs, drops off below this point."

"All this further blurs the boundary between what we call stars and what we define as planets," he adds.